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Televangelist Pat Robertson challenges the idea that Earth is 6,000 years old

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X

xbhaskarx

Member
I don't think anyone could have seen this coming....

CNN: Pat Robertson challenges creationism

Televangelist Pat Robertson challenged the idea that Earth is 6,000 years old this week, saying the man who many credit with conceiving the idea, former Archbishop of Ireland James Ussher, “wasn’t inspired by the Lord when he said that it all took 6,000 years.”

The statement was in response to a question Robertson fielded Tuesday from a viewer on his Christian Broadcasting Network show "The 700 Club.” In a submitted question, the viewer wrote that one of her biggest fears was that her children and husband would not go to heaven “because they question why the Bible could not explain the existence of dinosaurs.”

“You go back in time, you've got radiocarbon dating. You got all these things, and you've got the carcasses of dinosaurs frozen in time out in the Dakotas,” Robertson said. “They're out there. So, there was a time when these giant reptiles were on the Earth, and it was before the time of the Bible. So, don't try and cover it up and make like everything was 6,000 years. That's not the Bible.”

Before answering the question, Robertson acknowledged the statement was controversial by saying, “I know that people will probably try to lynch me when I say this.”

“If you fight science, you are going to lose your children, and I believe in telling them the way it was,” Robertson concluded.

...

Ussher’s work, from the mid-1600s, is widely cited by creationists as evidence that Earth is only a few thousand years old. Answer in Genesis, the famed Christian creationist ministry behind the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, cites Ussher as proof of Earth’s age. They describe the archbishop as “a brilliant scholar who had very good reasons for his conclusions concerning the date of creation.”

For Christians who read the creation account in Genesis literally, the six days in the account are strictly 24-hour periods and leave no room for evolution. Young Earth creationists use this construct and biblical genealogies to determine the age of the Earth, and typically come up with 6,000 to 10,000 years.

Most scientists, however, agree that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old and the universe is 14.5 billion years old.
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i-d1b57c8cfad69eb3a489e402e0712b44-devil.gif
 
Rentahamster

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
What gives that Ussher guy more credibility than, say, that other wacko from California who used Biblical numbers to show that the world was gonna end on May 21?
 
cheststrongwell

cheststrongwell

my cake, fuck off
I grew up in evangelical churches and went to a conservative Christian college. Most of the people I grew up with don't believe the earth is only 6000 years old. This isn't very controversial.
 
V

VALIS

Member
Wow. If I made a list of top 100 things I didn't think I'd hear today, this would've come in around #87, roughly.

The nearly across the board left wing victories in the last election really has some traditional right wingers budging off their old fashioned views lately. Hopefully it lasts more than a few months.
 
M

mre

Golden Domers are chickenshit!!
Rentahamster said:
What gives that Ussher guy more credibility than, say, that other wacko from California who used Biblical numbers to show that the world was gonna end on May 21?
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350 years.

Also, people who predict that the world will end on day y never have any credibility left on day z. So there's that. Up next: the Mayans.
 
phisheep

phisheep

NeoGAF's Chief Barrister
Rentahamster said:
What gives that Ussher guy more credibility than, say, that other wacko from California who used Biblical numbers to show that the world was gonna end on May 21?
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Well, maybe because Ussher was a bit more rigorous. He recognised the Biblical timeline was not complete, took pains to correlate and reconcile it with other ancient histories (as they were known at the time), trace them back where the overlapped with Biblical accounts at both ends and did some serious proper research trying to stitch them all together.

Not entirely his fault that at the time nobody knew any better.
 
K

Kinitari

Black Canada Mafia
"If you fight science, you are going to lose your children, and I believe in telling them the way it was,” Robertson concluded.
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Guarantee this is more to do with it than any real desire to have a more intelligent worldview. I'm assuming he's dealt with a lot of young christians who were being disillusioned by their exposure to the scientific consensus.
 
F

freenudemacusers

Member
I remember the workaround presented for carbon dating as a kid was that the universe was indeed created 6,000 years ago, but was created with 'age'. I see that seems to fallen out of fashion. But this was a Bob Jones text iirc, so a bit on the hardcore side.
 
E

Enron

Banned
cheststrongwell said:
I grew up in evangelical churches and went to a conservative Christian college. Most of the people I grew up with don't believe the earth is only 6000 years old. This isn't very controversial.
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Same here, minus the conservative christian college bit.

GAF has some caricature of what actual Christians are like because of LOLCHRISTIANSRDUM stories they see on blogs, forums, and occasionally something on the news. I grew up in the Southern Baptist Church and I don't know or can't remember ANYONE that actually believes the earth is only a few thousand years old.
 
H

hym

Banned
cheststrongwell said:
I grew up in evangelical churches and went to a conservative Christian college. Most of the people I grew up with don't believe the earth is only 6000 years old. This isn't very controversial.
Click to expand...

So does that imply most Christians are admitting scripture is not meant to be taken literally or is there still some creative interpretation left of the genesis story where it all magically becomes fact. Like maybe God took a short vacation in between heavy creation days like say 4 billion years then returned to find a horrible mess, "quick" clean up of a couple more hundred million years to get back on track and create mankind.
 
cheststrongwell

cheststrongwell

my cake, fuck off
macuser1of5 said:
I remember the workaround presented for carbon dating as a kid was that the universe was indeed created 6,000 years ago, but was created with 'age'. I see that seems to fallen out of fashion. But this was a Bob Jones text iirc, so a bit on the hardcore side.
Click to expand...

My favorite is that Satan created the fossils to be a dickhead.
 
cheststrongwell

cheststrongwell

my cake, fuck off
hym said:
So does that imply most Christians are admitting scripture is not meant to be taken literally or is there still some creative interpretation left of the genesis story where it all magically becomes fact. Like maybe God took a short vacation in between heavy creation days like say 4 billion years then returned to find a horrible mess, "quick" clean up of a couple hundred million years to get back on track and create mankind.
Click to expand...

Most Christians don't believe everything in the bible is literal.
 
K

Krowley

Member
cheststrongwell said:
Most Christians don't believe everything in the bible is literal.
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Based on what I've seen, I agree.

There are a few Christians that do, and they tend to get more press for obvious reasons (partly because they tend to be the loudest and most activist), but Christians exist across a very wide spectrum in terms of how they view the bible.
 
H

hym

Banned
cheststrongwell said:
I don't know. You tell me.
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Well I'm saying this an hour after the Israeli ambassador to the UN used that very same scripture as evidence they poses a 4000 year old legally binding deed of property on a piece of land in the Middle East, signed by the Skylord himself.

This is 2012, International Politics.
 
cheststrongwell

cheststrongwell

my cake, fuck off
hym said:
Well I'm saying this an hour after the Israeli ambassador to the UN used that very same scripture as evidence they posses a 4000 year old legally binding deed of property on a piece of land in the Middle East, signed by the Skylord himself.

This is 2012, International Politics.
Click to expand...

Oh, ok. Thanks for the info.
 
E

ElFly

Member
Guess he realizes this is a dumb, losing battle, and that religious people should concentrate on the issues that really matter to them.
 
K

Klocker

Member
hym said:
Well I'm saying this an hour after the Israeli ambassador to the UN used that very same scripture as evidence they poses a 4000 year old legally binding deed of property on a piece of land in the Middle East, signed by the Skylord himself.

This is 2012, International Politics.
Click to expand...

Sad some of us landed in this time where insanity is taken as reverence and bloody wars are fought in its name.
 
Dude Abides

Dude Abides

Banned
cheststrongwell said:
I grew up in evangelical churches and went to a conservative Christian college. Most of the people I grew up with don't believe the earth is only 6000 years old. This isn't very controversial.
Click to expand...

That's odd. I grew up in a town where the majority of folks were evangelical protestants, and the largest employer was a very conservative religious college, and belief in a young earth was widespread.
 
P

PhoenixDark

Banned
I grew up around creationists and didn't run into many young earth believers. Many believe the Genesis gap theory, which leaves room for the earth being billions of years old.
 
K

Krowley

Member
Actually, if the "world as a computer simulation" hypothesis is true, then it is very possible that the earth is much less than 6000 years old, in real time. It could be only a few minutes.

And also, dinosaur fossils could have been planted here to make the simulation seem more realistic, depending on when the simulation actually started from.
 
G

Gentleman Jack

Member
ElFly said:
Guess he realizes this is a dumb, losing battle, and that religious people should concentrate on the issues that really matter to them.
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I concur. It reminds me a lot of the self-reflection congressional Republicans are doing regarding immigration reform in the aftermath of the 2012 election results. Robertson realizes he should be growing rather than shrinking his funding and political bases. It won't stop him from saying appallingly stupid things from time to time but at least he's not taking the dumb road on everything (marijuana, the age of the earth).

Writing that felt like applauding a grown man for not shitting himself after 100 failed tries, but I'm in a generous mood right now.
 
C

CornBurrito

Member
Enron said:
Same here, minus the conservative christian college bit.

GAF has some caricature of what actual Christians are like because of LOLCHRISTIANSRDUM stories they see on blogs, forums, and occasionally something on the news. I grew up in the Southern Baptist Church and I don't know or can't remember ANYONE that actually believes the earth is only a few thousand years old.
Click to expand...

Except statistics put the US acceptance of Evolution at ~60%. Given how large a percentage of the nation is Christian, I'd imagine a good chunk of that 60% are Christians.
 
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